Early this February, the Office of Institutional Research at SF State reported that business administration was the largest undergraduate major in fall 2017. It accounted for 19.3 percent of undergraduate declared majors followed by engineering (5.4 percent) and computer science (4.5 percent).
The California State University impaction report declared business administration as an impacted major at SF State as well as with other 10 CSU’s according to the report updated in September.
Linda Oubré, Dean of College of Business does not find it surprising that Business administration is impacted in the other 23 CSU’s as it reflects the trend from a national level to campus. It’s a major that maintains its popularity in the U.S. and continues to grow.
Bahram Sherwani, who is pledging a business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi, and is majoring in political science, states one of the main reasons students declare business as their major has to do with the access students here at SF State have living in the Bay Area.
“I think people are switching into business admin, because it’s kind of a safe route,” said Sherwani. “It’s really easy to network and basically get involved in the tech industry, especially if your nearby where all the headquarters are.”
The most impacted courses in business administration are marketing, followed by business management, finance, accounting, general business, international business, information systems and decision sciences, according to the Office of Institutional Research.
Oubré emphasized how business is needed in every field ranging from healthcare to technology and how companies and alumni across the Bay Area are in search of students who offer the knowledge of a certain business concentration such as hospitality and tourism but are flexible with other business concepts such as finance.
College of Business Representative, Shirin Jafari shared her agreement as she also emphasized the variety of courses offered within the business department.
“It’s a major that can be used in so many disciplines and fields because all the companies now need marketing talent,” Jafari said. “[Companies] all need someone who can do that stuff and a business major is diverse in the courses they offer [at SF State]. You can eventually become specialized in a few or a lot of fields.”
Oubré also stated that freshmen and sophomore students tend to change majors in part due to the high impact and limited introductory courses offered. Her plan is to create “touch-point” basis to eventually offer more introductory courses that will maintain freshmen and sophomores as business majors and through graduation.
“It’s just for the most part, it’s just always traditionally has been an upper division major and in fact if you look at most other CSU’s only a few of them have courses for freshmen and sophomore[s],” Oubré said.
